Deft acoustic guitarists with a heavy-metal sound (28 April 2010)
By Sam Adams For The Philadelphia Inquirer
Apart from a few brief wah-wah interludes, the guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela’s show at the Keswick Theater Wednesday night would have sounded identical had the (electrical) power cut out mid-song. But over the course of a 90-minute set, Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero proved that it’s possible to play heavy metal with no more than two acoustic guitars and four exceptionally deft hands.
Although they’re originally from Mexico, Sánchez and Quintero first broke through in Dublin, Ireland, largely on the strength of their live show. At the Keswick, the stage was practically bare apart from a few strategically placed light stands and a pair of equipment cases they used as makeshift stools. But the breathtaking agility of their playing was more than attraction enough, visually as well as musically. It’s one thing to listen to their deft, skittering rhythms on record, and another, more awe-inspiring experience to watch as Quintero’s fingers fly over the fretboard, beating out fractions on the body of her guitar – sixteenth notes, thirty-seconds, perhaps even an occasional sixty-fourth.
Not surprisingly, the two venerate the gods of heavy-metal guitar. With “Atman,” taken from their new album, 11:11, they paid tribute to “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott of Texan shredders Pantera. Alex Skolnick, of like-minded headbangers Testament, joined them for the song and also opened the show, keeping pace with Sánchez’s descending melodies. Skolnick’s rhythm section filtered in halfway through, briefly filling the stage but not appreciably expanding the sound.
Rodrigo y Gabriela didn’t need a drummer, or even drums, to manufacture the equivalent of an arena-rock drum solo. While Sánchez beat out time on a wooden box, Quintero turned “Triveni” into a percussive fireworks display, damping the strings with her left hand as her right became a blur. Dispensing with notes altogether, she thumped the edge of the guitar with her fingers, the thwack of her thumbing ringing out like a rifle shot.
Each of the songs drawn from 11:11 tipped its hat to a different musical influence: The swirling atmospheric title track acknowledged Pink Floyd, while the lyrical “Santo Domino” paid homage to the Dominican pianist Michel Camilo. The tempo dipped slightly for “Logos,” whose fluid phrase was a nod to jazz guitarist Al Di Meola, but it cranked back up afterward and stayed that way. Unplugged or not, the electricity never stopped crackling.
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